Life has been extremely busy lately, and I won’t bore you with the details, but it's prevented me from posting for a LONG time. I finally have a calm week though, so I’m excited to break my HIVE silence with an Exode post.
Exode development has been plugging along as fast as can be expected from a single dev. There’s been lots of changes but most of them aren’t overly obvious unless you are actively following the project. We do have one very exciting update though that you can’t miss - BETA PACKS!
Alpha boosters are no longer available on the primary market, you can only buy from other players, and Alpha starters will soon follow. Beta starters are available AND usable. Beta contracts and boosters are for sale but can’t yet be opened.
To help new players jump in, I wanted to revive my “How to Exode” series of posts. I arbitrarily decided to start with the Religious Visionary. I’m posting to HIVE first, and when I get around to it I’ll update and reblog to medium.
One of the three* (four if you count the super exclusive rebel deck) new Beta starters is the Religious Visionary. We now have everything we need to start our own cult. More importantly, for the price of $10 new players have everything they need to start playing exode. I’m not entirely sure what to expect from this deck once colonization goes live, but it certainly seems to be fairly well rounded, especially if we get cards that allow us to grant “Religious” to others similar to how the Syndicate Chip turns people into syndicate members.
You can read a basic explanation of the deck below, or skip to the end where I have several youtube links you can watch.
ORIGIN
The soul of the deck is obviously the Religious Visionary Origin. Its part of the religious and civilian factions, so it gives you a lot of leeway in who you can use for your crew. Unsurprisingly as a cult leader it boosts religious cards and loyalty. If I had to guess, I expect it would make larger colonies easier to manage as well as help in “suboptimal” situations.
SHIP
You are the captain of a Fulgurus Crux Frigate which is usable by religious, military, and criminal factions. It's armed and upgradable, but not the largest ship out there. It can hold 3 passengers, 4 crew, 4 cargo and 2 equipment. These specs go against my personal expectations for a Religious deck, but work nicely within the confines of a 9 card starter.
OFFICERS
This starter deck comes with two officers so you will want to choose a third which properly reflects your goals. I particularly like the Cult Security Officer. He’s a thug with Station, Shooting, and Investigation making him very useful during evac. He also comes equipped with a weapon. In the three games I’ve played so far, I’ve promoted him to XO each time. The Exiled Cult Officer on the other hand is a gamble. She’ll have three skills, and they’ll undoubtedly be useful, but you won’t know what until it's too late to tweak your deck.
Without manipulating factions, you have multiple options for your third officer SO FAR. I personally found the existing crew to be a little too fragile, so I would choose someone combat heavy, but properly geared you might want to fill other gaps.
- Communication Officer
- Administrative Officer
- Security Officer
- Battle-Trained Socialite
- Alanna Vos
- Eliza
- Norah
- Shen
- Stug
- Admiral Valro
- Mob Leader (Beta)
- Motivated Civilian (Beta)
- Retired War Veteran (Beta)
Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments or ask me for additional info on any of them!
CREW
The starter comes with four crew, so you can fill your ship without much thought. The Inquisitor Initiate is disciplined with armor and shooting. Give her a gun and she can probably keep your cargo collectors safe. The Religious Clerk is non-combat, and her evac use will largely depend on what skills she rolls. Cult Station Security has much needed station and shooting skills to help you survive long enough to launch. Lastly, the Cult Techie will fix your hyperdrive, and based on my three attempts with this deck so far, he’ll fix it quite well.
PASSENGERS
With the starter ship, you don’t need to waste any time finding passengers. The Cult Followers card will fill all three slots. Hopefully they’ll be useful once you land!
EVAC EXPERIENCE
With this deck Evac is pretty straight forward. You don’t have any extra passenger slots, so unless some of your crew is missing you can completely ignore the docks. You have a techie who can easily fix your hyperdrive. The only real choice you need to make is whether or not cargo is worth the risk. Provided their stats support it, I personally recommend sending 1 or 2 to collect cargo until it gets dangerous. Everyone else should collect fuel. Playing it safe will be particularly helpful when you reach the colony, as every character counts.
DECK IMPROVEMENTS
I have tested out this deck twice without any modifications. Both times I successfully landed. My second game, which you can view here, was a bit rough, but still a victory. That being said, you can massively improve your chances by spending an extra $10 on the player market.
I strongly suggest buying weapons. They are cheap, plentiful, and a HUGE help.
- Rekatron SD is a well rounded gun currently available for 26 cents each. Grab 6 of them.
- Firetalker is a bargain alternative, currently available for 10 cents each. Defensive Ammo will ensure you can keep shooting for 18 cents each.
Armor is, quite literally, a life saver. Unfortunately it's a bit pricey.
- Eisen Suit - Arctic Edition is currently your best bet. I’d get one for each officer and possibly your Cult Station Security as well. Currently it starts at $1.59, but I expect it to increase in the future.
- “Universal Fixer” suit is also useful. Get one for your Cult Techie and another for your Religious Clerk and you probably will have someone able to fix your ship. Currently 15 cents each.
I already mentioned getting a third officer. The options there are much wider, and probably would deserve its own article!
VIDEO LINKS
I’m not much of a streamer, but I wanted to at least give a taste of what to expect.
Unpacking Video
No sound, no editing, sorry!
Sample Evacuation Crew
This was my crew before my second, rather rough, evacuation attempt.
Sample Evacuation
Victory comes at a cost. And a lot of waiting.
Unedited and uncut, so I won’t take it personally if you fast forward a lot of it.
Also, you can see a soon to be fixed bug at the end where the display gets stuck. Once this bug is fixed, I’ll hopefully make a follow-up video with a customized crew.
Sample Landing
Even down two crew members, we still landed successfully.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and hopefully the videos were helpful.
If you are new to Exode, and decide to buy in because of this post, please list me as a referral! We both get account bound cards for it. Even if you can’t sell them, they will give you more options when you play in the future!
With the revamped website, I’m not sure if my referral link will still work. If that doesn’t work, simply type “984a3c4” when prompted.
And I certainly won’t say no to anyone who wants to buy me a booster ;)
Great write-up, comrade 🍉
You broke it down very well; this will surely help some newbie pilots out there in the galaxy.
I must have somehow missed the cult followers when I opened my pack as this feels like the first time I'm seeing the card! Three generated passengers sounds awesome!
That's a good deal for an Eisen Suit, if you ask me. Later, when more people discover and explore ice planets (like mine) demand will increase. I sure can't wait to test that boosted Quality vs cold feature, myself.
Interesting point you bring up about an item similar to the syndicate chip. Maybe we can expect something like that in the beta booster collection. After all, if there's a slot for an affiliation chip to be inserted, who's to say there aren't other sorts of chips. I could definitely see the religious faction or even the Flesh Cult doing something like this! The initiation rite: get chipped and now you're born anew...
Hope you find time to keep those posts coming! Can't wait to see how the other 2 starters handle.